Cooperative Control Strategy of Variable Speed Limit and Lane Change Guidance in Freeway Bottleneck Area

Intelligent connected transportation is an important technique to alleviate traffic congestion and improve traffic safety. Considering the congestion problem in the bottleneck area of the freeway under the intelligent connected transportation environment, this paper proposes a cooperative control strategy which combines the variable speed limit (VSL) and lane change guidance (LCG). First, based on the fundamental diagram, the freeway bottleneck area is divided into cells according to the lanes. The lane-level cell transmission model (LCTM) is established. Then, an optimization model is built with the main goals of efficiency, safety, and comfort. A genetic algorithm (GA) is used to solve the model. After that, the VSL and LCG are combined and a cooperative control strategy based on model predictive control (MPC) is proposed. Finally, simulation experiments are carried out with Python. The results show that the cooperative control strategy can significantly improve the traffic operation of freeway bottleneck area.